Missing Piece Group
Years ago, I founded the company that built the Rhapsody music service. I recently gave
a brief talk about certain music and movie industry claims that really bug me (see video, below). Some say that I might have come off as being ... a bit sarcastic? And they may have a point. But the numbers behind my talk all came from actual research, performed by an actual Copyright Mathematician (me, that is). Check out my talk, and if you'd like to know where my numbers came from, read on (I'll also explain the part about the aliens. There's quite a story behind that).
The Motion Picture Association's claims of $58 billion in actual US economic losses and 373,000 lost jobs came from
this press release. These numbers originated at a think tank called the "Institute for Policy Innovation" -- an organization that Businessweek once profiled in an article called "
Op-Eds for Sale." In it, an IPI analyst freely admitted to taking payoffs from disgraced lobbyist
Jack Abramoff in exchange for writing "op-ed pieces boosting the lobbyist's clients." The IPI's president supported this behavior, saying it was neither wrong nor unethical, and dismissing those who apply "a naïve purity standard" to the business of writing op-eds.